Red Eyes
by Punctuator
Summary: Lisa and Jackson meet again. Hey, don't they always? Creepiness ensues when Mr. Rippner buys Miss Reisert a drink on yet another stormy evening flight. If it's not all about her this time, then who...?
1. Chapter 1

**RED EYES**

From where she was sitting, he was nothing but a torso. A skinny torso in a pale blue dress shirt and a spendy suit jacket. From her seat by the window, she couldn't see his head; his arms were up, struggling to get an unwieldy clunking something into the overhead. She didn't mind that, the clunking: everyone knew that those compartments were designed to repel boarders.

What she did mind was the serenade. In a baritone sub-bellow that belied far too many late nights on the road with U2 blasting from an overly powered car stereo, the torso was singing, "Tall and tan and young and lovely/The girl from Ipanema goes walking."

_You have got to be kidding._

Okay. Good for half a grin or one whole wince, whichever came first. Lisa Reisert put down her copy of _Time_ and said, "You know, the first rule of Headphone Club is—"

"You don't sing along with Headphone Club." The clunking ceased, the overhead door clicked shut, and Jackson Rippner dropped down into the seat next to hers. He pulled earbuds from his ears and grinned at her. "Hello, Lisa."

"Shuck."

"Umm— " For half a second, he looked confused. "Pick one."

"Shit."

"That's better." Rippner reached inside his suit jacket, switched off a black iPod. "How've you been?"

"What the hell are you doing here?"

"Just heading home."

"And you just happened— you just happened to end up on this flight. In this row."

"Oh: that again." He carefully rolled the cord from his 'buds and packed the coil into the pocket that held the iPod. "Do we really need to—"

Her glare said _We do_.

From the intercom the captain's voice announced their clearance for takeoff. The cabin shuddered; the 747 rumbled away from the terminal. They trundled toward the runway as the last of the sunset cast reddish light through the oval windows. She could have stood up; she could have shouted for them to stop—

But— she didn't. It all seemed too familiar: familiarity led to surreality; surreality led to hesitation. There he was, smoothing his trousers, buckling his seatbelt, settling back. Looking at her. Since their first trip, she'd seen his eyes plenty of times in her dreams, in circumstances ranging from the unreal to the downright embarrassing; his eyes by now seemed almost everyday. Practically ordinary— in an ice-that-could-freeze-your-very-soul kind of way.

"How?" she prompted.

"I've been following you all day--"

"Stalking."

"—stalking you all day. That I'll— I'll admit that. But I'm here legitimately; I promise: I really needed to catch this flight."

"Uh huh."

The engines ramped up; the jet hunkered down at the head of the runway, rolled, picked up speed.

"Do we need to pause for your moment of jaw-clenching anxiety, Lise?"

Lisa gripped the armrest. "Do you mind?"

"Not at all. Take your time." He rested his head against his seatback, began to hum. "The Girl from Ipanema," again. He nodded absently to the beat.

Lisa flinched. "Would you— Stop. Stop it. Please."

"Sorry." Rippner cleared his throat. The jetliner nosed up, sank for a split second as its wheels left the tarmac. Lisa's knuckles locked. He said casually, "I was, um, doing something in an elevator earlier—"

"'Something.' In an elevator."

"Yeah."

"Something sinister."

"Definitely."

"You don't have that song on your iPod."

"No."

"No--? Would you care to bet on that?"

She looked at him very evenly. Rippner met her eyes very levelly, very coldly. Then he pursed his lips. Lisa raised her eyebrows at him.

He smiled, a full-on smile, all teeth and boyish dimples. "Okay, okay— Fine. We've all got things we're ashamed of— You got me, Lise. You got me."

"'The Girl from—' Hold on." Lisa swallowed, stopped smiling back, felt herself go quiet. "You did it again."

"Did what again?"

They were airborne now, leveling out. The sky outside the windows was dropping from royal blue to midnight blue to black. She shuddered.

"Putting me at ease."

"Pardon--?"

"The last time we—" _Why hadn't she stopped the plane? What was she doing, just sitting here--?_ "You were all sweetness and charm while we took off, remember? How did you put it--? 'Keeping the focus on me—'"

"'On you.' 'On you and your father': yes." Rippner's smile lost several degrees of magnitude but, oddly, very oddly enough, none of its charm. "Much as I hate to disappoint you, Lise: this time it's not all about you."

"Oh, really?"

"Yes, really."

"Who, then—?"

She nearly spat the words; Rippner drew back.

"Gee, Lise, I never took you for the jealous type—"

"Who are you trying to kill this time?"

"I'm not killing anyone. I'm on my way home. Job got called off."

"Then why are you sitting next to me?"

"You want to know? Honestly--?"

"I want to know."

"I want you to know that I can be an okay guy."

For a moment she thought the cabin had lost pressure. Little shock-induced dots danced before her eyes. "What--?"

A woman's voice over the intercom announced the flight's beverage service.

"Buy you a drink?" Rippner asked.

"You can buy me a _bottle,_ Jack. You wanted me to know— Are you crazy?"

He shrugged. "Job got called off. I catch this flight— It's not looking like we'll be full up, so I request a seat next to an old friend—"

"Thanks."

"For the 'old' or the 'friend'--?"

Lisa gave him a venomous look.

"We take off, we get in the air— We partake of the for-an-additional-fee beverage service. Cocktails, witty conversation. Then, one hour and twenty minutes into the flight, I contact my associate in Minneapolis, and he doesn't press a certain button."

Her throat tightened. "Which does— or doesn't-- cause what to happen?"

Rippner smiled. "The IDS Tower. Better the Crystal Court than the Shattered-Crystal Court, don't you think--?"

"And this makes you an 'okay guy.'"

"Yes."

"Oh, God."

"Lisa. Look. You don't have to do a thing. No phone calls, nothing. I send one little text message, and it's done. People stay alive; nothing goes boom."

"Why can't you send it now--?"

"We have agents on the ground: they need to get clear, catch flights. The less anyone knows at any given moment, the better." He paused as the beverage cart bumped to a halt at their row.

The stewardess loomed, smiled down at them. "Can I get you anything?"

Rippner's eyes were friendly, twinkles flickering in the ice. "How about that drink, Lise?"

"Uh, sure." Lisa bit her lip. "Why the hell not? Line 'em up."

--------------------

Okay. Really— and it wasn't just the gin talking, and really, she'd held herself to one— things could be worse. She kept an eye on the time. Forty-five minutes to go. They sipped their G and Ts and talked. Really: he could be well beyond charming without half trying. Too bad that whole terrorist-murderer-supercilious-bastard thing was always lurking just out of sight. In any other reality, he would have been a keeper.

_How much G went into that T, anyway--?_

She was looking at the ice in her squat plastic cup, half-smiling at something he'd said, and Rippner was jostling the ice in his own glass and saying the rest of it. She checked her watch; he checked his. Then he tipped his head back, looked over at her.

"So I said to Tom, I said to him: 'For God's sake, don't put the toothpaste next to the C-4—'"

He stopped. He sat forward, frowned past her shoulder.

"There— Did you see—"

"What—?"

"Of course you didn't—" Rippner leaned around her, looking closely at the window. Lisa pressed back against her seat, away from him. "There was—"

By then— already by then— she'd had enough of looking that closely at his ginger sideburns and his sharp jaw and his stubble. "Jackson."

"Ridiculous. What the—"

"Jackson."

He looked at her as though she'd only just appeared. "What?"

She suddenly found she wasn't nearly as ginned as she'd thought. "Why don't you just tell me what you're trying to plant on me or steal from me? Make things easier on both of us. Save you having to knock me out."

"I don't follow." But he did retreat a little. Lisa re-expanded into her personal space.

"This 'Twilight Zone' routine is a little tacky. 'Did you see—'? Come on: it was corny when William Shatner did it. I can't believe you'd—"

She stopped. Rippner was looking past her head at the window. He was breathing shallowly. She could see the pulse in his neck.

"Lise. Slowly. Turn around slowly."

"Why?"

"Please, Lise. Just turn around."

She hesitated. Of course she did. She had to admit he was doing the spooked thing very well. Maybe his up-tops had sent him off for acting lessons. He wasn't quite Tony material yet, but the quiet tightness in his voice, the slightly shaky frown: very convincing.

_Alright: fine. He'll use a sap this time. Whatever. I've got plenty of Excedrin._

She turned toward the black window. She looked through the oval panes, the dingy plastic inner, the thick glass outer. She shrank back until her left shoulder was pressed tightly against Rippner's right arm.

Two red eyes, sharp as ruby beads, were staring back at her.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Lisa could hear her own breathing. She could hear Rippner's, too.

Below the eyes, two tiny pockets of mist condensed on the window, shrank slightly, grew again. Breathing. Through the thrum of the engines, if she listened closely, she could hear—

Lightning flashed. The world outside went from black to ash gray. The cabin lights flickered; the cabin concussed with thunder. For just a second, through the window, Lisa saw beneath the eyes a snout like a wide pig snout, hairless and covered in dark wrinkly hide; and inside the snout she saw teeth. Teeth. Sharp and jagged and far too many—

It hit the glass. The snout. With a fleshy, bony, toothy thump.

To her credit, Lisa didn't shriek. She said— Rippner said it, too: "Gah--!" She jumped sideways in her seat. Bumped, Rippner's tray table flew up; behind her, Rippner shrank back and away. The back of Lisa's head clunked against his chin; her lower back impacted with kidney-grooving force on the armrest. Lightning: again. Again: thunder—

And it was gone.

At the window: a smattering of rain. Big, heavy drops. Nothing else.

They were sitting ear-to-ear. Her left, his right. Her right arm was stretched across her seat; her left forearm was braced against the seat in front of Rippner's. Anyone willing to pun might have said "Shock du Soleil"; Rippner breathed out in the vicinity of her left collarbone and said, "Lise—"

"What--?"

He'd had his arms out in a pattern that roughly echoed hers. He brought them in. His left hand ended up on her midriff.

"Umm—" He shifted against her. "Much as I hate to ask: would you mind--?"

"Sorry." Lisa pushed his hand away and untwisted herself. From the intercom came the captain's explanation: bit of weather, just come up, wasn't-on-the-scope-but-don't-worry-folks, etc. She forced herself to look at the window: nothing. Wet splattery black: that was all.

Behind her, Rippner said: "Ah—"

Lisa turned. When Rippner's tray table had gone up, all it bore had come down. The rest of his drink, its ice, one freshly opened and still uncapped mini bottle of gin, half a squat bottle of Canada Dry tonic water: all in their panic had fled to the nearest gravity pocket, which had turned out to be his lap. Rippner grimaced.

"I--umm."

The spot— in an atlas it would have been inked in pastel blue and labeled _Lake Tanqueray_— couldn't have been more unfortunately placed. Lisa glanced, looked discreetly away, chewed her lower lip.

"I think you need to—"

"Blot. I need to— Damn it." But he looked sheepish as well as flash-eyed angry. "I'm going to go blot this—"

She sniggered. It was nerves, absolutely— the jump, the scare— Honestly, she couldn't help it. "Is that what they're calling it these days--?"

"Care to lend a hand--?"

"No--! No." Lisa relaxed her shoulders, calmed her breathing. A smile still twitched at the corners of her mouth, but when she looked at him again she wasn't fighting the urge to giggle. "You go-- blot; I'll hold the fort."

"Fine." He began to rise— he paused. "Lisa: look."

Thump. Her heart. Thump. Her face betrayed it: fear. Rippner looked at her and smiled. He nodded toward the window.

"Look."

She turned again, again looked through the black window at the rainy night. About thirty feet away, at a slight back-angle, she saw a tiny red light.

"That's what we saw," he said. "The running light at the tip of the wing. Must have reflected in the panes, appeared double."

"Sure."

"Mm hm. I'll be right back."

The second after he'd gone, she took her eyes from the window. _Sure. A running light and its reflection with a whole double row of jagged teeth strung between them._ Suddenly, she felt claustrophobic that close to the bulkhead; she pushed up out of her seat, ducked to avoid the overhead, stepped halfway into the aisle.

She looked after Rippner. He was about twenty feet away, maneuvering past a small cluster of young men in t-shirts and shorts standing and sprawling in and around the last few rows of seats before the aft washrooms. She saw his back, the excuse-me tension in his shoulders; the boys were smiling their no-problems and stepping back. One of them stepped the wrong way; he and Rippner collided. The kid— he was slight, dark-skinned, black-haired; his t-shirt was red— smiled sheepishly, caught himself on a seat. Rippner passed on.

Lisa found herself watching the kid in the red shirt. He didn't seem to belong with the other guys, who looked like frat boys coming home from spring break; he was standing slightly away, and his body language was quieter. He looked back, toward her, not turning. It was as though he were testing the air, sensing—

She stepped fully into the aisle. Well ahead, past the frat boys, Rippner opened a door to the left, stepped through. Lisa took one step forward, then another. The boy in the red shirt turned to face her. Lightning; a rolling tumble of thunder. The cabin lights dimmed—

--and in the dark she saw his eyes: red and sharp as ruby beads.

Lisa stopped dead.

Beside her, a gravelly voice said: "Miss—? Pardon me--?"

She looked down. An old man looked up at her from the aisle seat. He wore a dark double-breasted suit and a tie striped in gray and black; his face was a mass of wrinkles. From the wrinkles he was watching her with eyes of mismatched coloring: one green, one blue.

He smiled at her. "Don't worry: it's not you it wants."

"What--?"

The lighting came up. Lisa looked after the boy in the red shirt. He was dark-eyed now, and he was talking and laughing with two other young men. His teeth flashed white against his dark skin.

"I said, what did you--"

She looked down again. The seat beside her, the aisle seat, was empty.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

"Excuse me."

A woman's voice, professionally polite, behind her. Lisa backed into the row where the old man had and hadn't been, and the stewardess passed by. Rippner was taking his time in the washroom-- at least it seemed like he was; with her head half-turned toward the center of the plane, she tried to keep a casual eye on the red-shirted kid. With each passing second she felt sillier doing it. Mr. Sinister was now the life of a very small party: presently, he was relating-- with swooping hand gestures and coming-atcha! facials-- either a surfing adventure or a skateboarding accident. Frankly, she was beginning to feel a little like an idiot. What should she do? Catch the stewardess-- "Miss, I'm not drunk-- really, I'm not-- but there's a red-eyed body-swapping pig-monster loose on the plane--!"? Go after Rippner-- much to the delight of Team Testosterone, milling just outside the bathrooms? Or--

She went back to her seat. Not quite-- the window was still swallowing too much light: she sat in Rippner's seat instead and leaned out so she could look aft. Five minutes. She'd give him another five minutes.

He was out and back in three. He left the washroom, came up the aisle; when he saw where she was sitting, he frowned slightly. She moved back to her seat; as he sat back down, she chanced a sidewise glimpse. Lake Tanqueray had indeed suffered a drought.

"Is something wrong?" Rippner glanced toward the window, tension tightening briefly across his shoulders. She appreciated that. It made her feel less alone there in Nutland.

"No-- I just didn't want to sit by the window while you were-- Jackson, I don't know quite how to say this--"

She hesitated; Rippner waited. Finally, he smiled and said:

"I'm attracted to you, too, Lise. In an honest-to-God let's-get-crazy-naked-and-see-what-happens kind of way. It's perfectly natural. Nothing to be ashamed of."

He was looking casually at her out of the corner of his eye. Freshly blotted, indeed. Lisa took a deep breath.

"Can we scratch-- that? That whole-- what you just said?"

"We can."

"Good. I just wanted to say that you've been very-- umm-- civil. Except for the singing-- and it wasn't the singing, per se: you've got-- really, you've got a nice voice-- but that song was-- was-- Boy. Oh, boy. Anyway, I appreciate it. I do."

"Thank you. The point, Lisa--?"

"Probably a bad way of putting this--" Lisa looked at him very directly. "Jackson, did you put something in my drink?"

"There's a _good_ way of putting that--?"

"Did you?"

"No. Why?"

"I'm seeing things."

His first smirk of the evening. "_Dead people,_ Lisa--?"

"No. Maybe. I don't know. There was an old man-- about five rows back--"

"Sure. I saw him. Zoot suit, Bowie eyes. He's right--" Rippner half-stood, turned. He froze there, looking. He stepped into the aisle, his face still; he stepped out of sight, came back. He sat back down.

Lisa locked her eyes on the back of the seat in front of hers. "He's not there, is he?"

"No. But that doesn't mean he's-- He could have gone-- The bathrooms are right back--" He stopped talking, swallowed, checked his watch. "I think we should focus on the task at hand."

"Wait. What 'we'? _You_ need to focus, Jackson." Lisa looked at her own watch. "Thirty-one minutes."

"Okay. We-- _I_ hold off the Thin White Duke hallucinations for thirty-one-- that's thirty-- minutes, and it's done. Last time I substitute absinthe for Beefeater." He caught her expression. "Kidding, Lise. Kidding. Just have to check--"

He reached inside his suit jacket. His expression became very odd. He felt around--

"Jackson--?"

He was pawing at the jacket's lining now, patting his chest and sides. "My iPod is gone. So's my phone." Anger sparked in his eyes; he stood. "That kid-- the one in the red shirt. He bumped me. He must have-- Damn it."

He stepped into the aisle; Lisa scrambled after him, caught his arm.

"What are you going to do?"

Rippner looked at her hand on him. Then he looked her in the eye. His expression was both chilling and reassuring. "I'm going to get my things back."

Lisa reached for her purse. "I'm going with you."

"I wasn't going to kill him--" On his face, a brief war between exasperation and urgency; urgency won. "Fine. Come on."

He preceded her into the aisle, took three determined steps, and stopped. Lisa bumped up against his back.

"What--"

She looked past Rippner's shoulder. Up ahead, the party had died down. The flight had gone to night-lighting; the cabin was dim. The frat boys were in assorted seats; reading lamps dotted the landscape. Lisa saw young men's faces with dozing-closed eyes, heads nodding to earphoned beats. She looked farther back.

The kid in the red shirt was standing in the aisle right outside the bathrooms, looking back at them. Even less light reached the washroom passage than illuminated the cabin proper, and she saw very clearly his eyes like tiny red bearings, shining, metallic. He opened the door of the washroom Rippner had used; just before he entered, he smiled for them. His teeth in the gloom were sharp and jagged and far too many. He went into the washroom and closed the door.

"-- the hell," Rippner said softly. He moved forward again; Lisa followed.

"We could--" She swallowed, felt her heart drop back into place. She noted eyes noting their passing. They reached the washrooms; Rippner stood outside the door through which the red-shirted-- _red-eyed, piranha-toothed_-- kid had passed. The locking clasp was flipped to its scarlet side: IN USE; Rippner swept the door with his pale eyes, as though he were looking for a secret lever. "Jackson, we could use my phone. You don't have to--"

"We can't use your phone, Lisa. Two reasons--" He pressed his hands to the door, felt, pushed firmly. "One: Bill's phone will receive a tag from my phone that identifies it as my phone. If we-- if I send the message from any other phone, his phone will ignore it."

"That's ridiculous--! What if-- what if something goes wrong? Like this--?"

"What if a red-eyed demon kid steals my damn phone?"

"Yes."

"I get my damn phone back. I'm going to break the lock on this door. Keep a lookout."

"Two." Lisa glanced back at the cabin, saw nothing but seats and the backs of heads. Still, she had a terrible feeling that everyone for rows around could hear their every word. "You said there were two reasons."

Rippner backed against the washroom door opposite theirs, braced himself for a shoulder ram. "Your phone isn't in your purse. You tossed it in your suitcase this morning."

"How do you--"

The locking clasp slid to green.

OPEN.

"I've been stalking you all day, remember--?" Rippner spoke almost absently, without malice or sarcasm. He reached for the door handle. "Stand back, Lise."

The one and only time she'd begrudge airport security for not allowing him to be what he was: Rippner here had no arms but the wiry ones up his sleeves. No male-inadequacy-issues-grade knives, no guns, very likely not even a pair of nail clippers. Opening, the door came between them. She held her breath, gripped her purse like a leather brick.

On the other side of the metal panel, Rippner breathed out: "Fuck."

Lisa looked. The washroom was empty.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Rippner leaned into the washroom. Before Lisa could say, "Check the ceiling--" -- shades of B-grade horror-film pounces flashing in her head-- Rippner was looking up. Nothing-- no toothy thing-- fell on him. He swept the cubicle with his eyes. He entered the closet-sized space and looked for a long moment into the toilet, and Lisa thought, as he was obviously thinking, of his hand and forearm venturing sleeveless into the steel basin, through the hole at the back, into the smelly dank mysteries of plumbing eight miles high. She cringed a bit. Rippner reached for the cuff button on his right sleeve.

Then he paused; he turned his head to the left and down. "Lisa, look."

Possibly ten inches of the black cord of his earbuds lay uncoiled on the floor. The gold-plated plug was inches from Rippner's left foot. He bent, picked it up. The cord went taught in his fingers. He frowned, pulled gently, followed the black tightrope to its anchoring point.

"Hell--" he said quietly.

The cord was stuck about an inch off the floor through a brushed metal panel. Not between the panel and the surrounding wall. Through the panel itself.

Lisa eased into the washroom and backed herself up close against the stainless steel washbasin. The door closed behind her. She stood there to Rippner's right and looked at the black cord defying certain specific laws regarding matter and space, and between the cord and the stampeding rumble of the engines in that tiny space and the stagnant, sweet smell of antimicrobial chemicals, she found herself feeling a little dizzy. _How could anyone even think of having sex in a place like this--?_

Rippner knelt, examined the panel in which the cord was embedded. Some sort of access hatch, possibly two and a half feet wide, two feet high, held in place by screws. He tried to work his fingers under the edges.

"It's too tight," he said. "We need a screwdriver. Damn."

Even as Lisa thought _We are_ not _going in there,_ she heard herself say, "I have a screwdriver."

Rippner looked up at her, and for a moment his eyes were just short of beatific. "You have a screwdriver. How--? How'd you get it through security?"

"Well, it's not a screwdriver, not exactly--" She dug in her purse, came up with her keys. The keyring holding them was a round hunk of gray metal with the letters "S" and "W" carved elaborately into its arched face. Equidistant from each other on the round were four short blunt blades. Lisa unclipped her keys, handed the keyring to Rippner. "Compliments of Smith & Wesson-- and my grandmother."

"Henrietta left you a screwdriver." Rippner smiled wryly, slotted the first screw.

"No, she left me a keyring."

Screw number two, in a series of six. Three. "Not sure if I'm clear on the difference here," Rippner said.

He sounded-- and looked, his angular face thoughtful, his lean shoulders hunched but not tense-- like a man doping a leaky pipe. Lisa stared at him. _We're going to crawl through the wall of a bathroom in a 747. After an M. Night Shyamalan piranha-monster that can phase matter. Why does this seem like a bad idea?_

Under the circumstances, one little confession couldn't hurt. Lisa knelt next to Rippner and said, "She used to say, 'Baby girl, you have the key to my heart.'"

"Aww, Lise, that's so-- Mind your fingers--" He lifted off the panel. The remaining four feet of the cord to his earbuds, tipped with the earbuds themselves, snaked onto the floor. Rippner twisted back, leaned the panel against the toilet. "-- nauseatingly sweet."

Since it was apt to be one of his last snotty cracks, Lisa let it pass. She and Rippner knelt side by side and looked into the gap beyond the washroom wall. A square-sided duct, smooth-sided, filled with darkness. It cornered almost immediately to the right. From the lower side of that cornering came a pale green glow.

"At least I won't have to ask if Henrietta left you a Smith & Wesson Mag-Lite, too." Rippner hunkered down, leaned into the duct. "Stay here, Lise."

"Like hell."

He re-emerged, looked at her. His expression was one-quarter smile, three-quarters frown. Relieved. Possibly admiring-- though she doubted it. "Lock the door, then."

Lisa leaned back, threw the bolt, returned. She and Rippner were nearly touching, there in the cramped space. No, actually they _were_ touching, even if it was only upper arm to upper arm.

"Jackson," she said, "before we go--"

"Kiss for luck--?" Rippner's eyes strayed to her lips. Just like that, Lisa blushed.

"Tell me the code phrase. In case something happens. We'll have a better chance of--"

"'Honey, I miss you.'"

Lisa winced. "Any caps? Any numbers?"

"Just the aitch. No numbers. Comma after 'Honey.' Look, I don't pick the codes."

"Sure you don't--" She waited until he looked back at the duct. "'Ipanema'-boy."

Rippner turned on her, his eyes like the first ice of winter under a clear sunlit sky. A muscle twitched in his jaw. He rose up on his knees, glaring. Lisa shrank back from him, her heart thudding--

Rippner shrugged out of his suit jacket and handed it to her. Then he turned and crawled into the duct.

Lisa folded his jacket and laid it by the door. She set her purse on top of it.

_At least they'll have my license to ID my gnawed body--_

She crawled after Rippner._  
_

_

* * *

_

The light at the end of the tunnel-- a duct-jog to the left after the first right, then not-quite-a-drop down-- was chalky green and filtered through a metal grille. Rippner twisted in the duct, managed to turn himself around, and kicked the grille with both feet. It fell away, landed with a clatter. He twisted again, rolled onto his stomach, lowered himself through the end of the duct. He dropped out of sight.

His voice reached her a moment later, just above the heavy gargle of the engines. "Come on, Lise."

Lisa re-angled herself there in the duct-- they'd both of them be a world of dirt when this was over-- and backed out into chalk-green dim space. Rippner caught her near the ribs and lifted her down. She didn't fight him, even after his hands stayed on her once her feet met the floor.

They were at the aft end of the cargo hold, right where the tail-slant leveled out and the cargo space widened and rose. Crates were stacked before and around them, like buttes or mesas in a sickly green desert; passages wide enough for those, like Rippner and Lisa, of lean or petite physical dispositions opened between them. The lighting, flat and dead and falling squarely at the "institutional" end of the warmth scale, came from fixtures recessed into the bulkheads.

Rippner edged forward, between crate stacks taller than he was. Lisa followed. A clearing opened where the stacks ended; Rippner cautiously looked out, first left, then right. He eased out to the right, moving forward. Lisa eased along with him. She checked her watch-- she started: a chunk of time had broken off and fallen into the night since they entered the washroom. Eight minutes to go--

She looked up, and he was right there, looking at her and tapping his own watch and nodding. _Come on,_ he mouthed.

They continued forward. The squared crates of the first mesas gave way to stacks of rectangular boxes about seven feet in length and about three feet wide. Two things about this new region of crates, which were palleted in chained stacks reaching forward to the jetliner's wing box, struck Lisa as odd: one, the crates themselves varied wildly in condition. Here was wood bright and rough and golden, even in the bloodless light; there, one crate over, was wood punk-rotten and gray and well past its appointment with the pallet-breaker.

The second thing was the smell. Like wet Labrador retriever, an oily kennel stink, musky and predatorial. It intensified the farther forward they went. It continued to intensify even when Rippner stopped and said, "There."

On the floor before the last stack of crates at the near edge of the wing box lay his phone.

Within four feet of a crate whose end happened-- just happened-- to be open.

Rippner stepped forward. Lisa looked at the narrow block of darkness behind the phone. She couldn't see into the crate, and that was bad enough. Something, though-- something had spilled from it onto the waffled black matting. It looked like moldy straw. And the smell--

She grasped Rippner's shoulder. He turned to her; she said to his scowl, "For God's sake, Jackson, don't you watch horror movies--?"

"Lisa, we really don't have time for this."

He shrugged away from her hand, and she made no further effort to stop him. He went and picked up his phone. Likely more out of a sense of relief than out of any desire to reassure her, his stalwart Girl Friday, he smiled--

And the world tipped sideways.

Flashes of red-- red eyes, red shirt-- the dark-skinned boy came over the crates to Lisa's right. He caught her around the waist, shoved her to the left, bore her up-- her feet left the floor-- and dropped her, hard, between two stacks of crates. His body was lead-heavy, cold. According to his momentum, he should have hit the bulkhead; he didn't; Lisa, falling, saw him launch himself sideways and up, into the space between crate-tops and ceiling. He disappeared.

The waffled floor caught her shoulder and side. Her ribs bumped her lungs; landed, she lay shocked and gasping. She heard Rippner shout-- it must have been something in one of the many exotic languages he surely knew, but to her plebian stunned ears it sounded for all the world like "Shit-bugger-_fuck_--!" Lisa lurched onto her hands and knees. She crabbed her way to the edge of the sub-aisle into which the red-shirted ghoul-boy had tackled her; she froze.

Rippner, in the center passage, was on his back, kicking at something.

The pig-monster-- the creature from the wing, at the window, all teeth and eyes sharp as ruby beads-- had him by the right ankle, and it was dragging him toward the open-ended crate. Rippner was clinging with his left hand to one of a set of chains criss-crossing a loaded pallet; he lost his grip--

Lisa launched herself forward, caught his flailing hand, hung on. In a suspended moment, she saw on his watch-- that ridiculously macho blue-faced Tag Heuer watch-- just over three minutes to go.

Rippner looked back at her, upside down. Then he looked around wildly. Kicked. The pig-thing gurgled and growled, tugging. Rippner's back arched off the floor; he grunted in pain. He reached for something with his right hand, couldn't get it--

The phone.

He said, clearly-- she heard him clearly, at any rate, amid the grunting and the growling and the gasping of his breath and hers: "Lise, you have to-- The phone. It's time. Send the message."

Ridiculous. Ridiculous and terrifying. "I've got you, Jackson. Hold on--"

He looked at her angrily, desperately.

"Finish the job, Lisa."

Rippner let go. Lisa grabbed for him, but he pulled his hand away. He and the pig-monster shot into the crate with a shout and a thud, in a shower of moldy straw. Then everything went quiet-- or as quiet as things could go in the cargo hold of a 747 flying through a thunderstorm.

She scrabbled for the phone, flipped it open, pressed the power button. Watched the signal bars climb, hoping that whatever forces of darkness Rippner worked for ponied up the dollars for perfect phones, perfect calling plans, perfect reception. Scrolled the menu to TEXT MESSAGE, CONTACTS, BILL. Tap.

Tap. Non-alphabetic characters-- where, how, there. Tap.

Her special date, her springing red-shirted beau, where had he gone--? Tap.

Tap. SEND. Tap.

She sat back against a pallet, alone in the sick green light, the rumbling rotten kennel air. She watched the display on the phone, not the terrible backless black of the opening that had swallowed Rippner.

A pixelated envelope. MESSAGE. GET MESSAGE. Tap.

_See you soon, baby_

What it meant, she didn't know. Had she not been quite so jolted-numb, she might have congratulated her focus, her quick fingers. She powered the phone off and closed it. She closed her eyes, too.

_I should have let him kiss me. Shit._


	5. Chapter 5

Rustling. Grunting. Lisa started, opened her eyes. Rippner toppled out of the crate. He lay with his cheek on the waffled black floor; he tried to push himself up, failed. Lisa caught him from behind, under his arms, and pulled him clear. He sputtered, spat out pieces of straw. They sat there like that for a moment, him tugged up against her, both of them looking at the crate--

Nothing. No gurgling, no growling. No red eyes.

He was all wiry muscle and clammy warm tension. "Did you send it?"

"Yes."

"What was the reply?"

"'See you soon, baby.' Cap on the ess, comma after 'soon.'"

"Good. Good job, Lisa."

She held him for another moment, a moment longer than was absolutely necessary. Then she pushed him away. Rippner settled in beside her, sat as Lisa did, catching his breath, quaking a little. He raised his trouser leg, pushed down the cuff of a black sock. Ginger hairs on a pale ankle, a trim calf. Not a single tear in the skin.

"It let go of me," he said. "Why would it do that?"

He spoke rhetorically, of course. Lisa pushed hair away from her face; the sweat on her forehead turned the dust on her fingers to a very thin coat of mud. He couldn't expect an answer. She said anyway:

"Maybe you didn't make the cut."

"How's that?"

_It's not you--_

"He said it didn't want me."

"Who said--?"

"Old David Bowie. The old man upstairs-- Maybe it only wants people who are bad. Really bad."

Cheeky grin time. Through smudges, with bonus rhetoric. "So I'm-- not-- really bad--?"

"Jackson, I'm winging it here."

"Obviously."

"Asshole. Wait. Oh, God--"

All those long crates. Like weapons crates. Rifle crates.

"What, Lise--?"

Or coffins.

"Maybe it was recruiting."

Beside her, Rippner tensed. He swallowed, not looking at her; Lisa saw his Adam's apple rise and fall. He got up, looked about-- Lisa didn't bother; she had a sense that she'd seen the last of her dance partner, that little red-eyed bastard. When Rippner offered her a hand up, she took it.

"You know, we could continue this upstairs," he said.

* * *

To the washroom via duct. Why a duct?

So that they could see themselves for the messes they were, side by side, there in the restroom mirror.

Lisa leaned down, retrieved her purse. She opened it, dug. Without a word, she handed Rippner a comb.

* * *

Grooming, mutual. It seemed to come naturally. They swatted dust from each other, straightened collars and necklines, pulled paper towels from the dispenser and wiped away grime.

Rippner was having a go at a smudge crossing her forehead. "So the forces of evil don't want me. Whatever did I do to deserve that--?"

"You did the right thing--" Lisa saw the corners of his lips twitch; he was suppressing a smirk. She pushed his hand away. "Fine. Never mind."

"Come on, Lise."

"It's dumb, Jackson. You'll say something rude; you'll make me mad--"

"Try me."

"You sacrificed yourself. For those people in Minneapolis."

For a moment, Rippner looked at her blankly. Then his brows huddled over his clear eyes. "I did no such thing. You sent the message, Lisa. I couldn't care less about those people. The most important thing-- always: you finish the job. Whether people live or die is irrelevant."

"It didn't know that."

"Pardon?"

Lisa pulled another paper towel from the dispenser, wetted and soaped it, and scrubbed savagely at a black spot on his shirt.

"You were being dragged away by a monster, Jackson. Did finishing the job matter at that point? Really--?"

"Of course it--" He stopped, frowning. She kept her eyes on the spot in its spreading moistened circle; she felt his eyes on her.

"Right for the wrong reason is still right. Hate to say it, Mr. Rippner, but you did a good deed today."

He was still fuming-- in tiny ways invisible to the Rippner-unattuned eye-- when they left the washroom three minutes later. With a tight smile, he opened and held the door for her; she heard him muttering: "Of all the stupid--" She smiled back at him, sweetly, and walked ahead of him into the main body of the cabin. "'Right for the wrong--'," he was saying. "Moronic, cliched--"

He stopped grumbling-- he nearly stopped moving, and Lisa did, too-- when the cheers hit them.

Team Testosterone had revived. The frat boys had dozed or napped and had woken, refreshed. Lisa's cheeks went hot. She and Rippner had been in the washroom for nearly an hour, and the boys-- obviously, the boys had been keeping track. Counting the minutes. Possibly catching a muffled shout, rustling, the odd thud. What could a man and a woman have been doing in the bathroom of a 747 for all that time--?

"Way-to-go-GUYS!"

"Hey, bay-beeee--!"

"Mile high club-- _yeah_!"

Behind her, Rippner said, smugly, "What can I say, guys? She's an animal."

Lisa stopped. She stood there in the aisle, exhausted, sweaty, still wearing a weight of dirt. She stood there with all manner of eyes but red watching her. She bit her lip. Adrenaline remnants bumped about in her system, twitching, threatening tears.

She smiled. "Jackson, you know what--?"

"What's that, Lise?"

She heard it right through the nape of her neck. Smirk number two. She swung around. Her left hand went toward Rippner. Her right hand went back in a fist.

He tracked the fist, his eyes going wide.

Her left hand he ignored. An ancient trick, a sly one. While your opponent watches the obvious threat, you sneak inside--

Her left hand caught him by the back of the neck. Her fingers tangled in his hair. She pulled his head to hers and kissed him full on the mouth. She pushed her weight into him, shoved him off balance, held him steady with her right hand under his jacket, against his side. And kissed him.

"Mmmf--" he said.

She released him. Rippner staggered against a seat, his UV-lamp-blue eyes on her and on nothing, stunned.

"Whuf," she said to him. She was shaking. She turned toward Team Testosterone and grinned. "WHUF!"

She let the cheers buoy her back to her seat. She sat down, smoothed dust off of her skirt, and picked up her copy of _Time_.

A discreet delay later, a baritone throat-clearing. Rippner stood in the aisle next to his seat. "May I?" He was looking formally toward the front of the plane.

Lisa turned pages, passed ads, skimmed. She didn't look up. "You may."

Rippner sat down. He stayed quiet for a time while she pretended to read. Then he said, "You think about it, Lise: you very nearly did the _wrong_ thing for the right reason." He leaned in close, said barely above a whisper: "'I've got you, Jackson. Hold on.'"

"You're a bastard, you know that?"

"Yeah." He didn't sound nearly convinced, but he didn't sound smug, either. Truth to tell, he simply sounded tired. He sat back, looked straight ahead. "I know. So-- how about it, Lise?"

"How about what?"

He smiled at her wearily. His lids slipped lower over his crystalline eyes. "You know what. My place is just minutes from the airport."

She closed her magazine and looked away, toward the window. They'd left the storm. Far to the east, the very lowest edge of the sky was lightening to a deep royal blue. "I think you've pressed your luck enough for one night, Jackson."

He didn't reply. Minutes passed. When Lisa looked at him again, Rippner's head was back, his eyes closed. Asleep, or pretending to be. She opted, just for now, for the first one; just for a moment, then, she sat simply watching him. Freckles, far too many. Lashes, far too long. No wonder the forces of evil had coughed him back up. She stifled a yawn, started to look away, paused. Perhaps to guard an investment, just to be sure-- she would never say she was acting protectively, but she _had_ put a certain degree of effort into him that night-- she put her hand over his, there on the armrest. He didn't stir. She gripped his wrist gently. His bones were almost delicate, very human. His skin was warm and crisscrossed with fine ginger hairs. In any other reality, it might have been a "moment." Lisa held on to him and looked back at the window.

* * *

She woke when she heard the flight attendant waking Rippner. Before he opened his eyes, before he raised his head from his seatback, she'd removed her hand from his.

She waited, half out of her seat, while he wrestled his clunking something out of the overhead.

At her raised eyebrow, at her unspoken _What have we here? The makings of a homemade bazooka?_ --or any of a thousand variants-- he smiled and said, "Rare books, Lisa. Just a duffel's worth of rare books."

Then he stood aside for her, followed her up the jostling aisle to the door of the plane. Team Testosterone jostled along after him.

She hadn't noticed men among the flight attendants. The steward at the door was thirties-ageless, golden-blonde, slender in shirtsleeves, blue vest, a tie striped in grays. His eyes were mismatched in color, one blue, one green. He smiled. "Nothing like a floor show to liven a dull flight. Until next time, miss--"

He winked at her with his green eye. The press of passengers carried Lisa forward, carried Rippner right along with her.

"--thank you for flying Brandywine Air."

* * *

(Safe on the ground, yes...?)

They walked together along the concourse. It seemed only natural. Rippner steered her toward a quiet spot and stopped. Steered but not forced, Lisa stopped, too.

"Are you going to contact airport security?" he asked.

"And tell them what? That I helped a terrorist defuse his own plot while fighting off a pig-monster in the cargo hold of a 747?

"Something like that."

"Think I'll pass."

"Good girl." He smiled, just that side-- the right side-- of patronizing. "Tell you what-- why don't we collect our luggage and I'll buy you breakfast? Or do you have a connection?"

"You know I don't."

"Come on, then." He moved to go.

She stayed. "No. Thank you, Jackson-- but no."

"Lise, you completed the job. I owe you a bagel and an O.J., at least."

"So now I'm working with you. The FBI could-- My fingerprints are on your phone. Great."

"You saved a whole lot of people today, Lisa. You tried to save me--"

She grimaced. "You saved yourself, Jackson."

"All those folks in Minneapolis, then. Let me buy you breakfast for them."

Lisa hesitated. The flight attendants from their jetliner walked by, chatting. Among them was the ageless man with the mismatched eyes. He glanced their way, smiled a smile of charmingly crooked teeth, kept walking.

Lisa followed him with her eyes, held her breath while she waited for him to look back. But he didn't. He walked on with the other attendants; they turned a corner, disappeared. "Tell you what, Jackson," she said. "Let me buy _you_ breakfast."

Rippner pushed fingers through his dusty hair. "Lisa, look: there's no empowerment angle to this. You don't have to play the feminist card. It's just breakfast-- and I can buy my own, thank you."

"Can you?" That moment-- that next moment, when he frowned, when he knew only that she knew something he didn't: she really enjoyed that. "The kid with the red eyes, Jackson. He took your iPod and your phone. Care to guess where your wallet is--?"

She walked away. Rippner stood there.

But not for long.

**THE END**

**

* * *

A/N: **Thanks for reading, folks, and thanks for all your kind comments. Had a great time writing this. It came about when I thought, _What if Wes Craven had done _Red Eye_ as one of those cheesy TV movies in the mid-to-late seventies? As an ABC Movie of the Week? Or as a _Night Gallery_ segment? _Which is maybe not one of those things you want to admit, but, hey, that's how it happened. 'Til next time...**  
**


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